- A Chrome extension called “Microsoft to Microslop” that renames Microsoft references in browsers as a protest against the company’s aggressive AI integration.
- The extension reflects widespread user frustration with Microsoft’s Copilot AI, which faces extremely low adoption rates and growing privacy concerns among Windows users.
- Many users actively seek ways to remove AI features from Windows, highlighting significant backlash against Microsoft’s AI strategy despite CEO dismissals of complaints.
If you really want to freak Microsoft out, switch to Linux. Nothing terrifies them more than the moment you decide to leave.
Everybody always goes on and on about how great linux is for gaming pcs these days. I recently poked around online to see if my rtx5070ti would be supported and found a bunch of people facing issues, and that Mint and Ubuntu weren’t recommended.
I dont want the AI nonsense, and Windows/Microslop blows, but I want my new gaming laptop to work correctly for several years given the money I spent on it. I can’t see making the switch when the gpu support is so convoluted.
Ive had many Linux machines in the past, so that bums me out.
Edit: someone should make a webpage that automatically reads the hardware and specs of your windows machine and then creates a table of suggested distros. That table should also include “what you’ll lose” that shows which features will become lost or finicky. And it should also include direct download links.
If the goal is to have morons like myself adopt it, it needs to be basically fool proof and easy. Linux is much better and easier than it was in 2003, but that doesn’t mean it’s two-click easy.
No idea what you could have been reading, but by and large, there’s very little difference between distros when it comes to GPU drivers.
However, if you want the smoothest experience, then just use a distro that comes with drivers that install with the OS. Best one I can recommend is Bazzite. You won’t have to mess around with GPU drivers at all and it doesn’t matter which Nvidia card you have, they all use the exact same drivers.
I tried looking it up myself just now, but I’m not really able to find anything that would indicate you’d have a bad time on Mint with your 5070 TI. There was one guy on the Nvidia forum that said he was having a bunch of problems, but turned out his BIOS was the culprit. Another person who reported a problem on the mint forums discovered that his card was outputting to his secondary monitor which happened to be off.
Support for the 5070ti was added in the 6.1 Linux kernel, while the latest version of Mint defaults to 6.12 now. You should be able to install it and then install the latest 580 Nvidia driver from the Driver Installer tool and be off to the races without any real trouble, at least from what I read.
System 76 (Linux laptop maker) now ships a laptop with a 5070 Ti, so I’d be quite surprised if you encountered significant issues.
Thanks for taking a second to research that. Maybe my search results are skewed for some reason because i double checked before posting that comment. Weird. I’ll think about it more.
No prob! :)
I’d normally suggest installing it on a separate empty drive to test it out, but I know it can be a real bear to access those to swap em out on a laptop.
In your case though, I think as long as you can get a Live version of Mint to boot successfully from a USB stick (like there’s no flickering issues at the desktop and everything renders correctly), that’s usually a pretty good sign everything will be fine after you install the Nvidia driver on a full install (not to say you 100% won’t encounter any issues, it’s still possible, but hopefully not!)
This weekend. I’ve asked my significant other to check through and backup any files she may need but we’re switching off Microslops ecosystem this coming week. Got it down to Ubuntu or Mint for an ease of use while not jumping in the hole too deep. But we are in agreement at least to turn away.
Go with Mint, Pop!_Os, or Bazzite.
Ubuntu is only really a good choice if you want corporate/business level support. And even then there are other options.
Avoid Ubuntu - it’s made by the Microsoft of the Linux world. If you want an easy transition from Windows specifically, then you really ought to run KDE Plasma as your desktop environment, as that is by far the most similar to Windows in terms of look, layout and workflow, and it is very flexible in what can be changed and adjusted. GNOME is the other big one, but it feels more Mac-like or tablet-like.
It’s preferable to pick one of those two, as they support the modern Wayland protocol, whereas other desktop environments still only support X11 or only partially support Wayland - I don’t want to infodump on you right now, but suffice to say that Wayland is more secure, and is widely regarded as the future of Linux, while the old X11 has security issues, and is only in maintenance mode now.
Mint, for whatever reason, and unlike almost every other distro, doesn’t come with KDE Plasma as an option. I would recommend Fedora - it’s very solid and well developed, an all purposes workhorse that can do anything you need it to, and it’s a first class citizen anywhere, since it is one of the most commonly used distros by far. My runner-up would be OpenSUSE. If you’re dead set on something Ubuntu-based, then I would take a look at Tuxedo OS, or perhaps just going back to the roots, and install Debian.
I’m definitely not knowledgeable enough to contrast and compare linux distros but I’ll chime in with my experience for two years now on Pop!_OS.
So far, I’m super happy! Was simple to install and setup. Aside from Photoshop, there’s nothing I miss, and when in a pinch I’ve got photopea ready to go. I’ve got steam on there for gaming with little to no issues. My ds4 Bluetooth works out of the box, better than it did on windows. The options for how to install apps are great (love the pop shop ‘app store’).
I do a lot of go development using vscode (happy to try an alternative but the go ecosystem and plugin support is fantastic for vscode) and it’s smooth sailing.
My biggest hiccups were trying to use experimental nvidia drivers but rolling back to stable releases wasn’t too painful.
Vscodium might be an option for you
Second vote for Fedora. I set up my wife’s laptop with Fedora KDE, and she uses it with no issues. She gets easily frustrated by tech hiccups, and Fedora KDE just works for her.
The only issue with Fedora, and it isn’t a big one, is that the maintainers are adament about only including OSS. This isn’t much of an issue except that it doesn’t come with some video codecs IIRC. This meant that some videos online wouldn’t play until you add the codec. This isn’t hard, but it is a small frustration point for casual users.
Go with Bazzite. It’s built off of Bluefin which is an atomic version of Fedora.
Bazzite has all the accoutrements for gaming built into it.
its not because they are adamant about OSS, but because the H.264 and H.265 codecs have software patents that require distributors paying a license fee. the situation is a bit unclear, that’s why some distros choose to distribute these drivers. Besides fedora, opensuse and others too do not distribute these drivers.
but flatpak versions of software will get downloaded along with these drivers, and that will work on any distro, because flathub decided they can distribute these drivers. bit of a courageous move, but I guess they know what they are doing.
Linux Mint is a fantastic place to start (I would say the best place, personally). It’s especially good if you use an Nvidia card, as it makes the driver install trivial with the built-in driver installer tool.
If you don’t use an Nvidia card, I’d personally recommend going with the Linux Mint Debian Edition.
What if I do have an Nvidia card? I’ve been to and fro on switching for such a long time. I have so much random shit on my PC that it’s making the overhead to leave daunting.
Then I would suggest the standard Linux Mint Cinnamon, which as I said makes it extremely easy to install the Nvidia driver.
Mint is good. Avoid Ubuntu; snaps just make your life hard. You don’t need to know what those are, and if you avoid Ubuntu you never will need to know.
Tried both, Mint wasn’t great for me for gaming because of older kernels and such so I switched to Nobara.
Damnit I just switched to Ubuntu. That explains why I kept getting lost. What about Debian?
Debian and Mint are both good. The former is aimed at servers and the latter is aimed at desktop use. They are otherwise very similar under the hood.
Anything specific I could help out with?
Hmm, okay. Yeah I was trying to set up an environment to dabble with machine vision and had trouble finding good instructions or guidance for programming env setup. I think in college we used something-Unix but it’s been so long I don’t really have a frame of reference anymore. So I’m looking for a low-overhead daily driver that’s also relatively common or amenable to maker communities
If that makes sense.
If you install Ubuntu already your fine.
Personally I don’t want to spend time working on my computer (that’s work me), so I use mint. Just about any flavor of Linux can have a basic development env configuration done.
Cool thanks, I’ll stick with it! At least until I’m familiar and want to try something new
Hmmm, now that is not something I’m qualified to answer. Hopefully someone else speaks up.
No worries, it’s all part of the experience
It can be hard to convince partners and family, so congrats on the success. My partner worked in IT support but is not a computer person and does not own a PC. I simply provide a family Linux computer and some hosted services to be used by anyone in the family, usually EndeavorOS with KDE. They are aware of world happenings to understand why it is important and the biggest complaint I received was that I need to apply more scaling because the text is too small. :D
With all that said, I think both our situations are anomalous, though becoming more common.
If you really want to freak Microsoft out show up at their executive’s houses.
Does it really freak them out?
Those are how to install Linux inside windows.
And cancel any subscription you have!